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Participating podcasts will be paid on a "pay-per-play" basis for each ad-free podcast episode played on the faidr audio Superapp
Episode payments mimic the song play model and are expected to be greater than the ad revenue received per episode
Company details Seamless Play and Forward+ as two key features of its Enhanced Podcasts suite, which will be released in faidr later this year
BOULDER, CO, March 14, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- Auddia Inc. (NASDAQ:AUUD) (NASDAQ:AUUDW) ("Auddia" or the "Company"), a proprietary AI platform for audio identification and classification and related technologies, reinventing how consumers engage with AM/FM radio, podcasts, and other audio content, today announced its new pay-per-play beta program for podcasters and networks.
The program will treat podcast plays and downloads similar to streaming music, where content owners receive a direct payment based on how many streams they receive.
"For many podcasters, the economics are simply broken," said Michael Lawless, CEO of Auddia. "Ad revenues can be inconsistent, and unlike the top shows out there, you have the vast majority of podcasts, even seemingly popular ones, making just enough to survive. Meanwhile, ad networks, ad servers and ad salespeople are taking a significant chunk of the gross revenue from podcast ads. We believe the real value is in the creative work of the podcasters, and the economics should reflect this. By paying creators directly for each play, they keep a much bigger portion of the revenue generated from their material."
The program targets a specific segment of podcast listeners: listeners that skip the majority of ads and refuse to subscribe to exclusive or ad-free feeds at the show or network level. Partners in Auddia's pay-per-play program will have their episodes downloaded in full, with ads included, but listeners will be given controls that allow them to fast forward through ad breaks automatically, requiring no technological heavy lifting on the podcaster's end. When subscribers play a partner's episode, Auddia tracks the activity and delivers a payment based on the agreed-upon per-play rate, which is based on the podcast's current revenue-per-play and average CPM.
"Our aim is to tap into higher margins and enable greater efficiencies beyond the current economics of podcasting," said Theo Romeo, Auddia's Chief Product Marketing Officer. "Podcasts have, by and large, figured out how to monetize their superfans. The ad markets fluctuate, though they still provide a ton of value. We think there is more economic potential for most podcasters, and this beta program aims to expose meaningful upside for content creators, especially at scale."
Partner podcast episodes will be delivered through Auddia's Seamless Play technology, leveraging the Company's AI and NLP technologies for segment-identification and ad-avoidance. Users will be treated to episodes where the app fast forwards through ad breaks automatically, rather than requiring the end user to manually fast forward. Each play or download will be logged, and partners will be compensated at an agreed-upon rate on a monthly basis.
Alongside the Seamless Play functionality, Auddia will also release new seek forward functionality called Forward+. Using the Company's patented segment-identification technology, Forward+ will allow users to fully fast forward to the next identified segment of content. This functionality will be launched in faidr in the next major release this year as a beta test. The Company is working to increase the accuracy and number of separate segments the model can identify per episode as it simultaneously develops the APIs required to offer the features to other players via a SaaS model.
The Company is in talks with a number of potential partners and hopes to announce the first group of pay-per-play beta participants in the coming weeks.
